Misery Signals was formed after the disbandment of several bands, including 7 Angels 7 Plagues, Hamartia and Compromise. Having played briefly with 7 Angels 7 Plagues, former Compromise vocalist Jesse Zaraska was approached by Ryan Morgan and Kyle Johnson for a new project, which would become Misery Signals. Jeff Aust from Hamartia joined on as second guitar, and Ryan Morgan's brother Branden joined as the bands drummer. Aust soon left the band and has since gone on to join With Honor, he was replaced by Stu Ross - a friend of Jesse Zaraska's from St. Albert, Alberta.

The band eventually signed to New Jersey's Ferret Music, releasing their first full-length album, Of Malice and the Magnum Heart. After extensive touring, Zaraska decided to leave the band to focus on a smaller, less aggressive project named Sleeping Girl, at which point the rest of the band decided to put up an instrumental song on their MySpace page, encouraging anyone who wanted to take over the spot of vocalist to record their own voice over the instrumental and e-mail it to the band. This was the way they found new vocalist Karl Schubach, with whom they recorded the album, Mirrors. In July 2008, Misery Signals released their third full-length entitled Controller. After extensive touring in support of Controller in early 2009, members of Misery Signals wanted to pursue other musical directions outside of their band.

Schubach is involved in a heavy metal side project called Solace. He is the sole member of the band, recording guitar, bass and vocals in a D.I.Y.-fashioned home studio. The drums are added in digitally, through the use of a program on his Macbook. During the funding stages of this side project he provided incentives to individuals and bands in return for financial support using crowd funding platform Kickstarter . As part of this incentive scheme Karl Schubach provided guest vocals on a song by UK metal/hardcore band The Divided.

Hardcore/punk band Burning Empires consists of members from Misery Signals, Fall Out Boy and 7 Angels 7 Plagues, with vocalist Ryan Morgan, bassist Kyle Johnson, guitarists Stu Ross and Matthew Mixon, and drummer Andy Hurley. The quintet also owns a clothing line / record label called Fuck City.

Milwaukee-based punk/post-hardcore band Lowtalker consists of Branden Morgan and Stuart Ross of Misery Signals. They team up with Casey Hjelmberg and Matt Keil of Comeback Kid to complete the four-piece project. Lowtalker released their EP People Worry About Everything in the spring of 2010 through FC records.

In 2010, Stuart Ross became the frontman of a Vancouver, B.C. pop-punk band Living with Lions. Ross officially left Misery Signals on September 25, 2010 to put his focus on Living with Lions, and was reportedly tired of performing heavy metal. In October 2010, Kyle Johnson also announced his departure from the band.

After an extended period of inactivity with a heavy focus on side projects, Misery Signals made an official statement about the state of the band in November 2010. The press release addressed the loss of Ross and Johnson, and also announced that the band had not, in fact, broken up. Ryan Morgan commented that, "In the next few months, we'll group back up and return." Despite losing two of the founding members of Misery Signals, the remaining members did not consider changing the name of the group. On maintaining the continuity of the band's style and keeping the same name, Morgan said, "Stu and Kyle made awesome contributions, but the trajectory of the band remains the same in their absence. If the time came that our sound took a drastically different course, then it wouldn't be Misery Signals anymore, and we wouldn't pretend that it was."

The first new release from Misery Signals after going through this major line up change was a cover of Pink Floyd's song "Us and Them" from the 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon. The song was contributed to a soundtrack for the video game Homefront, which was released free of charge for digital download on March 22, 2011.

In April 2011, Karl Schubach posted a couple tweets mentioning band practice, writing new material in June, and said "We're focusing on bringing the new guys up to speed at the moment." The new lineup has now been finalized and will appear on the Crush Em All tour fall 2011.